


Brittle

by ClockworkRainbow



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blood, Gen, Lotor's childhood, one-off character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-04 23:32:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14031249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkRainbow/pseuds/ClockworkRainbow
Summary: Imperial Central Command was not a place for fragile things. Lotor managed regardless.





	Brittle

            The guard doesn’t see the prince in the hallway. He’s small, and rarely seen- not at waist height to others, not stealing place to place like a thief in central command- and it’s not the first time a larger body jostles him, tumbles the little glass vase from his hands and onto the floor where it shatters.

            It’s the sound that gets the guard’s attention, and they stop, stare downwards, take in the strange child with his shock of white hair, garbed in the deep wine red of the emperor.

            Of the _emperor_ , and then apologies, hesitation, panic. It wasn’t their fault, they didn’t see him-

            “It’s fine,” he says, quietly, little voice somber and heavy. “It was very breakable.” Crouches to pick up a piece- soft fingertip finds sharpened edge, recoils. A bead of dark pink blood wells from the cut. Knowing blue eyes drift towards the guard. “I guess people break easily, too.”

            They flinch, and scurry along their way- leave the hallway and the shards and the prince behind, watching them go before he sets himself to the problem of the shards.

            “I should have held it better,” he says to the hallway. He needs a dustpan, and a little broom, and there’s servants’ quarters near here, even if the cleaning is done automatically these days, by machines- it remains, and he goes and fetches them.

            He has to take another way, back to the hallway, working around because the witch’s people were there in the shorter route, shuffling place to place the way they did, and by the time he gets there, the glass pieces are gone, cleaned up. The machine got to them first.

            “Oh. I should have walked past the druid.” They probably wouldn’t have stopped him. They usually don’t, even though they always see him, not like the guards- watch him go, place to place, with those looming eyes he’s not sure are real.

            He isn’t sure the druids are real at all. Maybe the witch just convinces them all that they’re real, like the monsters under the bed, the monsters behind the pillars, the ones that were supposed to come get you if you didn’t pull the covers all the way over your head and hold very, very still.

            But he should have held the vase tighter, and it broke, and he should have walked past the druid, or he’d have the pieces. He goes back to the station, puts the broom and the dustpan back, thinks about other things he could have done. Been more careful with the pieces, made a basket for them out of his shirt.

            It had been confiscated off of someone who had been trying to sell things like that on the hub, and he had taken it when the customs officer wasn’t looking. That had been good, and fine; customs liked to steal things, and they weren’t supposed to have them anyway, so if Lotor took him no one could tell.

            He makes it all the way to the maintenance room, ducks under the pipe and into the crawlspace behind the pipe. He sits, and looks at the alcove right across from his head, the one he had been saving for something special.

            The vase had been blue.

            There were not blue things in central command. Reds and pinks and purples and blacks- lots of black, and lots of red. Black was the sky past the viewing windows, black were the panels and the floors and the pylons that held the hallways up; red was Zarkon, red was the walls and the ceilings.

            Lotor was the only blue thing in Central Command. Blue eyes. The wrong kind of eyes, the not-galra eyes, the barbarian eyes, they were the thing that didn’t belong in Central Command.

            But the vase had been blue, and it had found its way in. He tried to picture how it would look in this lighting, a little murky, but with a little slat of light, from over the top of the pipe, would’ve hit it and lit it up. It might have even sparkled.

            He tilts his head until it rests against the wall, and the spot where he would’ve put it continues to be empty.

            “They shouldn’t have made it out of glass. Or made it thicker,” he tells the room, not afraid to raise his voice, because the sound of the machinery drowns it out.

            “It would’ve fallen down, or gotten knocked off of the shelf anyway. It’s better that it happened out there, or I’d have to climb over the glass to get out. I’d get hurt.”

            He’s clever, and logical, and it doesn’t hurt, because, this is better for him. He wraps his arms around himself, rests them on his knees. The cut on his finger stings.

            “It was a lesson.” He looks around the corner, at the other things- bits of metal and wire. “These won’t break. They’re better.”

            His voice shakes, even though he buries it down between his arms. “I didn’t want it that much.”

            Even if it was blue.


End file.
